Television: Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Mpepper/ August 22, 2020/ Reviews

If you need something lighthearted to keep you from falling apart right now, this is the show for you. Based, as I understand it, on a Japanese comic strip, this is the story of Sakura Chiyo, a high schooler with a crush on the oblivious Nozaki Umetarou. (Note: I’m putting the characters’ names in Japanese order of surname first, given

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The Shakespeare Thing

Mpepper/ August 9, 2020/ Uncategorized

If you follow me on Twitter, you know my handle is @sh8kspeare. Why? Well… Shakespeare has had an influence on my life from early days. My best friend’s mother introduced me to his work; she even made me a lovely sign with Ophelia’s quote from Hamlet IV.v: “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” That

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Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) Series I & II

Mpepper/ August 4, 2020/ Reviews

So let’s be 100% clear from the start. I have not read any of the manga. I have only watched the first two series. The first is from 2008-2009, the second from 2010. I hope to find and watch Book of Circus, Book of Murder, and Book of the Atlantic. And of course I’d really love to read the manga.

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Jobs: The Dolls’ House

Mpepper/ August 2, 2020/ Uncategorized

Any time I talk about places I’ve worked, my kids are like, “You need to write about all these things!” I suppose it’s never all that interesting to the person who has lived it, but today I’ll post about one of the many jobs I’ve had in my life: a clerk at a doll shop. That is, I suppose I

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Movies: Palm Springs

Mpepper/ July 25, 2020/ Reviews

This… was part Groundhog Day, part Hangover, and pretty much all stupid. So if you like that kind of thing… Andy Samberg stars as Nyles, a man who has been living the same day repeatedly for longer than he can remember. That day includes the wedding of his girlfriend’s bf Tala, an event Nyles isn’t terribly interested in, maybe because

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Books: Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry

Mpepper/ July 20, 2020/ Reviews

Richard Lloyd Parry is a foreign news correspondent in Tokyo, and this book is comprised of numerous interviews with survivors of the March 11, 2011 tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of Japan. I only heard about this book from a YouTuber of all things (Chris Broad of the Abroad in Japan channel). But I have a dear friend who

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Art/Artist

Mpepper/ July 17, 2020/ Uncategorized

I have a degree in cultural media studies. What that means is my university didn’t have a screenwriting degree track, so I had to do “cultural studies” and then focus on screenwriting since that’s what I really wanted to do. But what that also means is that I learned fascinating ways to look at media, “read” it, dissect it, discuss

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Fan Fiction

Mpepper/ July 9, 2020/ Uncategorized

I was making up stories about my favorite book, television, and film characters long before I ever thought about writing them down. Writers have a tendency to fall in love with characters and stories, and many hone their skills by practicing on others’ characters before playing with their own. There is a somewhat mean-spirited saying in the writing world about

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